Monday, December 06, 2004
Look Homeward, William
It seems the U.S. should be looking to IMPORT freedom and democracy, not necessarily EXPORT it.0 comments
I am loathe to admit that I agree with much that's in William Safire's column today. But that's the fact of the matter.
Especially, his thoughts on "people power" through recent history.
However, it's now up to Safire to turn those thoughts from far away lands and turn them towards our native soil.
Which we all should be doing, in fact.
There actually is much for the Left to learn from the good folks in Kiev.
The Left succeeded wildly this year, when compared to the stunning machinery that Karl Rove commanded. A machinery which the Far Right has spent decades constructing. Now, an argument can be made that the extent of the Right's efforts were forced by the Left's stunning organizational successes, but we were still looking at being completely run over by election dirty-trick professionals, had our own "people power" not emerged.
Considering the Left's efforts really only started to take shape when the press began focusing on what Howard Dean was saying about Iraq, and in turn, what his campaign's efforts on the web were then starting to accomplish, the anti-Bush forces coalesced in an ad-hoc effort which fell short by only 2.7% of the vote. In fact, right up until election day, both sides were looking for a John Kerry win. Against a well-entrenched, fully financed, wholly constructed political juggernaught.
As people who felt thoroughly alone in their despair found there were a minimum of hundreds of thousands of others like them, their courage grew, and their feeling of perhaps having an impact grew as well.
This is the very definition of "people power." And it can only grow.
When we on the Left get over our Election Post-Mortem Funk, we'll find we're in much better shape for the future than we've realized.
Now, perhaps we just need to pick a spiffy color as a symbol, as the Europeans do so well. The Ukrainians have picked Orange, and when you see a photo, no one cares about the crowd count, like we fixate on here -- the impact comes from a sea of orange in this huge mob of people.
Very powerful image.
Something even Safire could see.
posted by Gotham 2:18 PM
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